


The Clocks Tick On

by luceluceluceluce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ensemble Cast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 14:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luceluceluceluce/pseuds/luceluceluceluce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final battle of Homestuck.<br/><i>"You move forward, sword in your hand. You wish it wasn’t broken. You wish you could be a hero. You would be better, stronger.</i><br/><i>But you’re not, and you guess that’s fine too."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Clocks Tick On

Your head is full of noises.  
Loud noises, noises you don’t understand. You blink through your shades- once, then twice. Something is happening around you. You hear shouts, loud thuds. Gunfire. Someone is sobbing. Why?  
There’s something heavy on your lap, in your arms. You’re cradling it. Blue cloth, stained with red.  
That should mean something to you, probably, but it doesn’t.  
Someone is shouting your name- Dave, Dave, Dave. It’s a hammer against your skull, smashing you open. It’s going to break you. Will anyone bother fixing you? Why would they?  
You’re not the hero, after all.  
The thing in your arms is heavy. It’s putting your legs to sleep. The red drips out, across your arms and your hands, warm and wet. You don’t mind. Your clothes are red already.  
“Dave.”  
The hammer is smashing you again.  
“Dave, please, look at me.”  
Okay, you can do that. That’s easy. Turn your head, focus your eyes. Simple.  
Someone is staring down at you. White-blonde hair, two purple dots. You take the image in, but you don’t understand it. The purple dots are looking at you, into you. It makes you uncomfortable.  
“You need to go, Dave. Now.”  
There’s red in the hair, that white-blonde hair. Red splattered over long-fingered hands, prying you away from the blue fabric.  
There’s something inside all that blue. Who needs so much blue? It makes you dizzy.  
Black hair, square glasses. Open eyes- those are blue, too. Too blue, too much.  
Pale, red-splattered hands pull you away.  
The blue lies on the ground. Arms. Legs. A face- no, you can’t look. It hurts, even if you don’t know why.  
“You need to focus, Dave.” The purple dots are looking at you again. Black lips are moving close to your ear, and the hammer smashes against you again. Bang, bang, bang.  
“The others need your help.”  
You should say something. You should make words come out of your mouth, but the task seems impossible. There’s a sword in your hand. A jagged, broken blade. You don’t know how it got there.  
“I’ll keep him safe,” the black lips say. You can’t say anything, so you nod. You wonder who the black lips are talking about, who needs to be kept safe.  
It’s obvious who the enemy is as soon as you turn to face him- great black wings, a scar over one eye. There are little dancing figures around it. Grey skin and orange horns, moving back and forth. Many of them lie on the ground, unmoving. Someone is kneeling in a pool of red, in front of one of the figures- black dress, black hair. Round glasses with cracked lenses. Shaking shoulders- they’re crying.  
You move forward, sword in your hand. You wish it wasn’t broken. You wish you could be a hero. You would be better, stronger.  
But you’re not, and you guess that’s fine too.  
The thing with black wings turns to face you, snarls. You could count it’s teeth, but you don’t. You raise your sword instead. You’re not a hero, but you are a knight. You know how to fight.  
A face to your left- grey skin, messy hair. Red stains across it’s chest, red tears in it’s eyes.  
“I’ll take this side,” it says.  
“Right,” you say, because you need to say something. The word tumbles out of your mouth without preparation, and you wonder if it’s a word at all. It doesn’t feel familiar.  
Your sword is familiar, though, and you clutch that tightly. Your hands are slippery with red. Go away, red, you don’t have time now.  
The red and grey figure to your left darts forward, and you follow, dodging to the right. Come in low, under that dangerous blade. Too late- it notices, counters your attack.  
Clang.  
Metal on metal, the vibration moving up your arms.  
“Watch out!” Screeches the red and grey voice, and you turn just in time to miss the black tentacle that shoots past your head. Oh, that’s right, there are tentacles now. Two of them. Factor that in, keep them in mind. Think of a strategy.  
Your mind feels fuzzy. You’re afraid.  
“Just a little longer,” says a different voice. A girl, you think. Maybe. “PM is almost here!”  
The voice comes from behind you, a safe distance. Not your problem right now.  
You step back, away from that sword, and try again. Slash upward, quickly, aim for the wing. You can’t get close to the body, not yet, but you can wound it. Distract it. Let the red and grey figure have a chance.  
But that tentacle appears again, wraps around your wrist. You swear, jerk away. The tentacle cuts into you, and suddenly there’s red running over your palm. Pain shoots through you.  
You reach over, switch the sword to your other hand. You aren’t as good with your left hand, but you don’t need to be. You swing it down and cut the end of the tentacle off. Clean, simple.  
There’s a howl, pain and anger.  
Now, you think. Now, red and grey voice, it’s your chance.  
Sickles flash through the air, but the other tentacle blocks it. You can see shock on that grey face. The sword you parried moments ago is arching downward now.  
The grey face can’t move in time- you can see it in his eyes, he knows.  
You move automatically- jump to the side, push the grey face away. He falls backward with a surprised shout, and your broken blade slices through tentacle a second time.  
Another howl, but it doesn’t matter. That sword is still moving toward you.  
Tick, tock. You know exactly how many nanoseconds it will take to reach you.  
Not very many.  
It reaches you before you can move away, just as you knew it would.  
There’s the sound of ripping cloth as it tears through your shirt, and then another sound, wet and soft, as it cuts through the skin of your stomach. You watch it bury into your skin. You can feel it, moving through you. It doesn’t hurt yet, but it will.  
The blade moves upward then- that’s right, one stab might not kill you. Best to make sure.  
The blade moves up, slicing through you, leaving you torn apart and broken, and then it’s gone.  
That didn’t take very long.  
You fall over.  
You count the seconds in your head. One. Two. Three. Fou-  
There, now the pain hits. It’s everywhere, right to the tips of your fingers. Your body isn’t big enough to hold all that pain, and it has to come out somehow. Your mouth is open, and you think you might be screaming.  
“There she is!” You hear a voice, but you can’t even start to identify it. Everything hurts too much- you can’t see. You’re not even sure your eyes are open.  
“There, that’s PM!”  
You can’t move, either. You don’t even bother trying. You saw that sword slice into you, tear up through your stomach. Aren’t your ribs supposed to stop stuff like that? Maybe it cut through your ribs. Maybe you don’t have ribs. That would explain it.  
Are you a doomed Dave?  
You must be. Alpha Dave doesn’t die. Alpha Dave kicks ass. So you’re a doomed Dave. That’s how it works.  
You know, in your heart, that you’re wrong. But you ignore it. Your heart can go suck it- it’s hardly beating anymore, anyway. You can feel it, stuttering. The rest between beats is longer each time.  
Once, twice, pause. Once, twice, pause. Once, twice, pause.  
You’re probably running out of blood. That’s what all the red stuff is. You knew all along, in the back of your mind. But it’s easier if you just think of it as a color. Like strawberries, like the fabric of your God Tier pajamas.  
Gods can’t die, can they?  
Rose said something about that. That’s right, Rose, you remember- white-blonde hair, black lips. Purple eyes. Where is she?  
Rose said something about dying when you’re god tier. You can only die if it was just or heroic.  
It must have been just, then. You’re not a hero.  
No, that’s not right. You pushed the red and grey aside. You saved him.  
Karkat, that’s his name. You knew that. You saved Karkat.  
You’re dying a heroic death, then.  
How strange.  
The noises haven’t stopped, but now you hear a howl loud enough to tear you from your thoughts- that same howl, but multiplied by a thousand, long and drawn out and desperate.  
He’s was killed, then. The winged thing. It has a name, but you can’t remember. Not really important, you guess.  
Something touches you. You wish it wouldn’t. It hurts, makes you thrash in pain. Not deliberately- you’re really not sure how much of your body you’re in control of anymore.  
“Dave.”  
A different voice. Not a hammer, this time. It still hurts, but you don’t mind.  
“Dave, come on, man.”  
Who is it?  
You know already, really.  
You open your eyes, look up.  
Black hair, square glasses, blue eyes. Too blue.  
“You’re gonna be okay.”  
Lips move above you, but they aren’t black this time. They’re sort of pinkish. Not too pink. They look soft.  
You’re not going to be okay. You know it, and he knows it, but neither of you say it.  
“I thought you were dead,” you say instead. Talking is hard. Your voice comes out as a croak.  
“I guess it wasn’t just or heroic enough,” he says, and then he laughs. God, that laugh. You want to curl up in it, pull it over you like a quilt.  
There’s silence for a moment, and you can feel him breathing. Quick, uneven breaths. From exertion, or from fear? He’s still a mess of red and blue, but you’re not sure if the red is his our yours anymore.  
“You saved Karkat,” he says at last. “He’s fine. He’s helping everyone else.”  
You don’t say anything to that. You can’t really talk anymore.  
“Don’t die, Dave, please don’t die.”  
You want to say okay. You want to heal up the wound in your chest, force your heart to beat at a normal pace.  
Once, twice, pause. Once, twice, pause.  
So much red. So much blood.  
The seconds are ticking by, quickly and steadily. You can feel the wheels of time turning through your head, the same rate as always, but suddenly everything is too fast. There isn’t enough time. It isn’t fair.  
“Stay here, Dave, just… please, we’ll find a way to fix you. Come on, don’t die.”  
Too late, and you know it. He knows it too, but he won’t let go. You like that about him.  
Your heart beats sluggishly.  
Once, twice, pause.  
It doesn’t start again.  
That’s the end, you guess. No way you can continue without a heart. It’s one of those things that everyone needs.  
Well, maybe not everyone. You think you might have read something about that on the internet once. But that was another time, another life.  
There are tears in those blue eyes. One drips down onto your face.  
You blink automatically, and find that you can’t force your eyes back open.  
You’re out of time.  
The clock in your head stops ticking.


End file.
